SAO: The Conquest of Caesar
by Lladnekrik
Summary: A tortured young man with a drive strong enough that he succeeds at everything he wants to, gets trapped in SAO. Even though he knows he needs to help end this world, he struggles to bring himself to do so. And when he falls for someone in game, the dilemma only grows.


_I was walking with a group of friends downtown. They were all talking over each other, competing for air time and altogether making their conversation unintelligible. Normally I would have butt in and stopped this madness, but my mind was somewhere else. I had just gotten news that I had made a Juniors hockey team. At sixteen, it was my dream to go all the way to the top, and this was the best path to do so. I had worked my hardest to make it and I had. We stopped at a crosswalk, so I looked down at my phone to send my acceptance of the contract I was reading over._

 _I saw movement in the top of my peripheral vision, my friends were almost to the other side of the road. They didn't see that I wasn't following them, and I didn't want to get left behind, so I ran after them. I heard a horn honking, saw headlights, then the world went black._

That day, I lost everything. When I woke up a month later, it was my brother watching over me, saying that he was so thankful that I had woken up. He was sobbing about how I needed to be more careful because I was the only person he had in his life that he could call family. He also was saying how it was his job to take care of me, yada yada yada.

You see, my parents had died when I was 13, leaving my older brother, John, and I alone in this world. I devoted myself to playing hockey, to distract myself from the horrors of reality. My brother dove headfirst into heading up the tech empire that our parents had left us. Even at 16, he was still a top rated mind in the industry. He was always the smarter one. It's not that I was dumb, far from it in fact, but I was very focused on athletics. I practiced every day, sometimes twice a day. Never took breaks, so much was my dedication to being the best. And the best I was. I was ranked number one in my age-group worldwide. I thought I was going to put my name into the history books and rewrite records.

When I heard my diagnosis, I was in shock. I tried to move my legs, but to no avail. I was paralyzed from the waist down. I thought my life was over, but it had just begun.

I am Caesar Conrad, and this is my story.

 **2 years later…**

I woke to somebody gently shaking my shoulder. "Caesar… Caesar… damn it Caesar, wake up!" I don't know how my brother had managed it, but even whispering, he was able to talk in an authoritative tone. I knew he wasn't going to stop shaking me, so I gave up on catching the rest of my dream and lifted up my head saying "I'm up… I'm up."

"It's about time, did you spend the whole night working on it again?"

"Yeah."

"That's the 3rd time this week!"

"So?"

"So, why are you staying up programing when you should be getting sleep?"

"We have a deadline to meet, one that we are not ready for. And for your information, I did get some sleep."

"Passing out in your wheelchair does not qualify as getting sleep. It's not the same as getting a sound eight hours in a comfy bed." John sighed, shaking his head softly from side to side, as he always did when he was disappointed. But he wasn't done with his little speech just yet. "Anyway, that program isn't due until a week from now. We're making progress, and if it weren't for a few little hiccups along the way, we would be on schedule right now. He understands that this isn't going to go as scheduled. That's why the release date isn't until a month after our deadline."

The argument ended there, as the 'He' in question walked into the room. "Gentlemen," he said, "how's it coming along?"

"Unfortunately, we are a little…" John started to say, but I cut him off. After giving me a raised eyebrow, to which I answered with a simple nod, John motioned for me to take the reigns.

"Sir, we are about three days ahead of schedule." I answered triumphantly.

"What?!" Both my brother and the other man in the room said in unison, clearly shocked.

"How are we ahead of schedule? We were behind at least a few days at the beginning of this week, weren't we?" John asked me, a puzzled look spread across his face.

"Yeah, we were." I responded. "The groups were having problems with not overlooking the simple things, due to the size of the program. Since they were still stuck at the beginning of the week, I assigned the groups to different parts of the program than they were working on before. The new perspective worked and soon the simpler errors were fixed. While they were working out the details of the little things, I logged into the system and started working out the bugs. After spending the last 70 hours or so doing this, there's not a whole lot more to do than polish the hell out of the system and package it up." When I finished, John was grinning at me, his laughing eyes full of pride over the once hopeless young man, who now overshadowed the other tech prodigies in the room.

"I must say, I'm impressed." The man spoke. "When I had been referred to your and your company, I thought I was the victim of some cruel joke. However, I now see that they may have undersold your capabilities." He smiled at the last words, his face exuding the sincerity to which he spoke.

While I was just sitting there, mouth agape, failing to comprehend what was just said to us, my brother took back the reigns. "Thank you, sir." He said. "You have no idea how much it means to me and my brother. It honors our company." John bowed to him in thanks.

A bow which he returned before saying, "The praise is well deserved, for without the Conrad Cooperation, my dream would not have become reality for another couple of years." With that, he started walking out of the room, pausing right before the door to say, "Oh, by the way, we three have been through so much together; so please, enough with the formalities. Just call me Akihiko."


End file.
